- US FDA approve Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 weight loss pill
Source: United Press International
“The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved Eli Lilly’s pill version of a GLP-1 medication for weight loss, making it the second company to offer a non-injectable version of the drug. The orforglipron medication, which will be sold under the brand name Foundayo, joins Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill as the only two oral GLP-1 medications to have FDA approval. Eli Lilly also manufactures the injectable Zepound and Mounjaro GLP-1 medications and Novo Nordisk makes Wegovy and Ozempic. Eli Lilly said Foundayo differs from the Wegovy pill in that there are no restrictions on when the pill can be taken. The Wegovy pill must be taken in the morning 30 minutes before eating or drinking.” (04/01/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/04/01/eli-lilly-glp-1-fda/6551775058931/
- Anthropic Rushes to Limit the Leak of Claude Code Source Code
Source: Bloomberg
“Anthropic PBC is rushing to address the inadvertent release of internal source code behind Claude Code, an AI-powered assistant that has become a key moneymaker for the company. Thousands of copies of the code were removed from GitHub in response to copyright takedown requests from Anthropic, according to a notice on the popular developer platform. Anthropic later said the takedown impacted more GitHub repositories than intended and has since been significantly scaled back. … In a statement Tuesday, Anthropic confirmed the leak and said ‘no sensitive customer data or credentials were involved or exposed.’ The company added: ‘This was a release packaging issue caused by human error, not a security breach.'” (04/01/26)
- GOP-led states that cooperate with ICE surrender their power
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Caleb O Brown & Patrick Jaicomo“The federal government’s dramatic expansion of immigration-focused cooperative policing agreements with state and local authorities (about 1,500 agreements across 40 states) comes against the backdrop of the historic unpopularity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Worse, recent reporting indicates that American citizens are increasingly facing federal assault charges in cities with large immigration crackdowns despite video evidence that regularly contradicts the claims of federal agents. It’s time for states to step back and reconsider their cooperation with the feds in this arena and all others when it comes to policing. The state-federal collaboration campaign undermines some of federalism’s most basic aspects and reduces state control over state police officers.” (04/01/26)
https://www.bluegrassinstitute.org/cooperate-with-ice-surrender-their-power/
- Fish don’t need bicycles, or government
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal“I don’t like things that are bothersome, unnecessary, and intrusive. It’s even worse when those same things are harmful and are forced into our lives. Like government. It’s said a man needs a government like a fish needs a bicycle. I think it’s worse than that. The situation is more akin to telling the fish he can’t survive without the bicycle, forcing him to buy one, tacking him to its seat to force him to ride it, and then demanding he thank you for the bike you’ve provided.” (04/01/26)
- Winners and Losers
Source: Notablog
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra“A person of genuine self-esteem doesn’t boast about their successes at the expense of others’ losses. Truly confident people who achieve their goals don’t feel the need to diminish others for their alleged failures or the need to corral an audience to ‘listen’ to tall tales of their achievements. … But this way of thinking is anathema to Trump, who has always embraced a binary, dualistic view of the world, where there are winners and losers, where the ‘art of the deal’ takes place in the context of a zero-sum game, whether in trade or in war. In a cutthroat struggle to the top, rules need not be obeyed. The only rule is to win at all costs.” (04/01/26)
- Braiding hair? That’ll require 500 training hours and a permit.
Source: Washington Post
by Sarah Harbison“Ashley N’Dakpri grew up watching her aunt run Afro Touch, a New Orleans hair-braiding shop. She learned the craft as a child and eventually took over Afro Touch’s Gretna, Louisiana, location, building a thriving business as natural hair styling boomed. Then the state stepped in. The Louisiana Board of Cosmetology informed her that without an ‘alternative hair design’ permit — requiring 500 hours of government-mandated training — she was braiding hair illegally. Even though N’Dakpri had spent years perfecting her trade and helping her customers, she needed a government permission slip to keep working. … a bill moving through the 2026 Louisiana legislative session would actually increase the training requirement from 500 to 600 hours …. There’s a motive hiding in plain sight: 600 hours is precisely the federal threshold that unlocks Title IV student loan funds for vocational programs. More red tape, more debt, more cosmetology school revenue — and fewer braiders.” (04/01/26)
- NASA’s Artemis Program Is a Monument to Government Waste. It Can Only Go Up From Here.
Source: Reason
by Quade MacDonald“If the pending Artemis II mission is successful, it will not just send Americans around the moon and back for the first time in more than half a century — it will send them further than any human being has traveled into space. If the rest of the Artemis program proceeds on schedule, astronauts will return to the lunar surface by the end of the decade. That’s been a long time coming. The government has been working to get Americans back on the moon since the Bush administration created the Constellation program in the mid-2000s. Wondering why it’s taking so long, given that the original moon mission required only seven years? The answer involves the familiar forces of government inefficiency and pork barrel congressional politics.” (04/01/26)
- Iran War Sends Fertilizer Prices Sky-High
Source: The American Prospect
by Emma Janssen“As the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran enters its second month, Iran has found a new way to hold leverage over the world economy: closing and opening the Strait of Hormuz at will. Iran’s ability to shut off one of the world’s major shipping routes, which transports one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas, allows it to dictate the cost of energy in the U.S. and everywhere else. Reporting suggests that Iran’s control over the strait won’t clear up whenever the war ends. … on Monday, the Iranian parliament passed a bill that would impose tolls on any ship passing through the strait, while banning U.S. and Israeli vessels from entering.” (04/01/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/04/01/iran-war-trump-strait-hormuz-fertilizer-fossil-fuels/
- An Empire Without Liberty?
Source: Libertarian Institute
by William J Watkins Jr.“Since the beginning of the war, President Donald Trump has touted dismantlement of the Iranian government as the American endgame. Even as U.S. officials negotiate with their Iranian counterparts to end the fighting and restore stability to world energy markets, Trump says he still wants to see a ‘very serious form of a regime change’ in the ultimate peace deal. This imperial hubris is unworthy of the president of a federal republic and would cause the Founding Fathers to cringe.” (04/01/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/an-empire-without-liberty
- Afroman’s verdict is just the beginning: Officers also deserve criminal scrutiny
Source: The Hill
by Michael Mellette“On March 18, a jury in rural Adams County, Ohio, rejected a defamation lawsuit in a matter of hours. That speed was itself a verdict — not just on the merits, but on the character of the case. Seven law enforcement officers had sued a music artist for using his own home security footage to criticize a police raid on his own home. The officers lost, in what civil liberties advocates called a huge First Amendment victory. The more important question, though, is going largely unasked — whether the officers who brought this lawsuit should face criminal scrutiny as well.” (04/01/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/5809358-officers-sued-rapper-security-footage/
- Birthright Citizenship Shouldn’t Be Up for Debate
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman“The US Supreme Court today will hear a major constitutional case about birthright citizenship. We shouldn’t be debating this right now. But since the president chose to act with such striking disregard for the law, here we are. Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment reads, ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ This has been the law for more than 150 years. … The Supreme Court in 1898 confirmed the 14th Amendment’s plain meaning. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, it ruled that children born here are citizens, even if their parents are not. That principle gave rise to generations of new Americans. Donald Trump tried to Sharpie this out of the Constitution.” (04/01/26)
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/birthright-citizenship-shouldnt-be-debate
- The Political Orphanage, 04/01/26
Source: The Political Orphanage
“How To Deal with Political Lizard People.” (04/01/26)
https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/how-to-deal-with-political-lizard-people
- Reason Interview: Brink Lindsey
Source: Reason
“How Capitalism Lost the Working Class.” (04/01/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/04/01/how-capitalism-lost-the-working-class/